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I have seen standalone gerunds used as newspaper article titles. In Spanish, the use of gerunds is a lot stricter. So are phrases such as "Generalizando desde muestras" and "Generalizando desde experimentos" wrong?

2 Answers
2

As @neizan said and as I explained in this other answer, gerunds cannot be used as nouns, so many times English gerunds are translated by infinitives in Spanish, mainly when the gerunds are the subject of the sentences, as in @neizan's example...

Anyway we would need more context, but I wouldn't say your sentences are wrong. You can find many examples of phrases with standalone gerunds in Spanish, the only requirement is that they cannot acts as the subject of the phrase (although in this case I'm not sure whether you can call it standalone)...

If Academy member Pérez-Reverte uses it then it's probably correct, but to me "Recordando Krasny-Bor" and the likes sound like a blatant anglicism.
–
deStrangisAug 5 '13 at 13:33

2

Standalone gerunds have been used in titles for a long time. For instance, Goya's famous painting Saturno devorando a un hijo (Saturn Devouring His Son). That's perfectly fine.
–
GorpikAug 12 '13 at 12:46

I'm not a native Spanish speaker, but those two phrases sound wrong to me. A full sentence would provide more insight as to context. However, if you mean something, "generalizing from experiments, we can say that most boys in Spain prefer soccer over baseball," then I would formulate it like this: "la generalización extraida/deducida del experimento es que..." or "a partir de los resultados del experimento, se puede decir que..." However, I might be making a wrong assumption about what you mean.

As to your question in general, these examples are using the gerund as a noun. Generally, in Spanish I've seen gerunds replaced by infinitive forms of verbs to express the same. Take the following example:

I'd say "Comer chuches antes de cenar no es bueno", without "El". It sounds much more idiomatic.
–
CesarGonAug 5 '13 at 22:24

1

I agree. In Spanish, the infinitive is used alone--at least in most cases.
–
Flimzy♦Aug 6 '13 at 4:29

I've edited my answer according to the comments from @CesarGon and Flimzy (presumably native Spanish speakers). I know I've seen both forms (in Spain), but I'm not sure about the difference...hmm maybe I'll pose a new question.
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neizanAug 6 '13 at 17:06

@neizan: (Yes, I am a Spanish native speaker). I have seen the article plus infinitive construction in Spanish but in a different kind of phrase. For example, you would say "El acostarse tan tarde se va a acabar." (Going to bed so late needs to stop). However, you would say "Acostarse tan tarde es malo para tu salud." (Going to bed so late is bad for your health." Don't ask me why. It may be related to the reflexive "se" in the first case.
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CesarGonAug 6 '13 at 17:39

@CesarGon, interesting example...actually in the English phrase, I'd say "THE going to bed so late needs to stop" in the former example, and no "the" in the latter. So, it parallels Spanish in this example, at leat.
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neizanAug 6 '13 at 19:54